Sharing (in) the Lab: Artistic research in Higher Music Education

Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir

This exposition takes as its departure the systemic inertia identified within Western Higher Music Education (HME), where education is driven by skill acquisition in a master–pupil format. Such approaches may hinder the growth of adaptable and reflective musicians. We propose an alternative: student-centred learning inspired by artistic research methods. To explicate this, we draw on findings through our own artistic research practices. Our hypothesis is that the model of the artistic, embodied research laboratory, as developed within the field of artistic research, may serve as a potent tool for renewal. By analysing our work as artist-researchers and educators, this exposition offers insights that support rethinking both institutional structures and pedagogical approaches in HME. Our aim is to strengthen student agency in learning situations and set them off on a path of lifelong learning. This research demonstrates that artistic research laboratories can provide practical frameworks for transforming HME pedagogy, offering educators concrete methods for fostering playful, inclusive, and sustainable learning environments whilst empowering students as active agents in their musical development.

INTRODUCTION

ENTER THE LABS

DISCUSSION CONCLUSIONS

LAB 1

LAB 2

LAB 3

LAB 2: THE DEGREE PROJECT

HALLA STEINUNN STEFÁNSDÓTTIR

This section links to Stefánsdóttir's teaching of preparation seminars for the degree project at Malmö Academy of Music from 2018 to 2022. Through three short video essays, it explores the application of the laboratory approach from different perspectives: i) within Stefánsdóttir’s own artistic research practice, ii) as a means of curriculum revision and implementation of artistic research methods in Higher Music Education (HME), and iii) in examining how the development of artistic research methods, set to foster altered orientations and phenomenological insights, along with modes of expression that extend beyond writing, is manifested in students’ own practice-based inquiries. In this way, the laboratory demonstrates how artistic research experimentation—through its intersection with politics of listening and alternative knowledge-making approaches—offers diverse pathways to reimagining teaching practices and students’ self-regulated learning.

ii) THE PREPARATION SEMINARS

i) THE ARTIST–RESEARCHER'S LAB

PDF 2. Transcript of video two.

iii) STUDENTS' PRACTICE-BASED INQUIRIES

PDF 1. Transcript of video one.

PDF 3. Transcript of video three.

Acknowledgements

Informed consent was obtained from all participants in video 3, including permission to share material from their degree projects (in videos 2 and 3).

Permission was obtained to include images in this publication from Oldfield, Rawlings, Olofsson and Wilson (in video 1) and Nguyễn (in video 2). Permission was obtained to include a video in this publication from Laws (in video 2).

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